Madeleine McCann’s parents share heartbreaking 21st birthday message
Madeleine McCann’s parents have said they still miss their daughter in a heartbreaking tribute to mark her 21st birthday.
“Happy 21st birthday Madeleine,” read a post shared on the Official Find Madeline Campaign Facebook page. “Still missing, still missed, still looking.”
Madeleine was reported missing from the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz on the Algarve on 3 May 2007, while on holiday with her parents.
Despite a multimillion pound investigation - involving detectives in the UK and Portugal - she has never been found.
On Saturday The Independent revealed the private investigator hired by the McCann family was returning to the scene where Madeleine vanished.
Julian Peribañez was part of the original private investigation firm Metodo 3 hired by the McCann family to explore leads that weren’t being considered by police in Portugal.
He revealed he is heading back to the family’s holiday apartment in Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, Praia da Luz, to chase leads and seek answers he claims police would be unable to get.
The McCanns admitted they left the then three-year-old and her younger twin siblings asleep in the apartment while they went out to dinner with friends.
Mr Peribañez spoke after the Metropolitan Police was handed £192,000 by the Home Office for Operation Grange – their continuing investigation into the disappearance.
He told The Independent: “The problem is that the only way to obtain information, in my opinion, is from certain people that would never speak to the police.
“The kind of person that knows what happened lurks in the underground of every city or town. I’m no one to say what to do to Operation Grange.
“I think it is good each one carries his own investigations. It would be great to be able to share between us, but I know how police forces work and I understand they won’t disclose any information.
“I’m happy to say if I find something relevant I will take that information personally to them.”
On the night Madeleine disappeared, the McCanns - affluent doctors - had been out for dinner with people they had met while staying at the Ocean Club in the village of Praia da Luz.
The group’s children were left behind sleeping in their respective apartments with the doors unlocked and a rota system was in place among the parents to ensure that someone returned every half-hour to check on them.
When Kate McCann took her turn and returned to her apartment at 10pm, she found that Madeleine was missing.
She raced back to the restaurant screaming: “Madeleine’s gone! Someone’s taken her!”
Christian Brueckner, a convicted rapist who has been named in the media but is known as Christian B in Germany because of the country’s strict privacy laws, is the prime suspect in the case.
He went on trial in February at the Braunschweig state court in northern Germany accused of multiple sexual offences he is alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, which are unrelated to the British girl’s disappearance.
The 47-year-old German’s appearance at the trial on Friday marked the first time he had been pictured in public since being connected to missing Madeleine in 2020. However, Brueckner has not been charged in her case.
He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time when Madeleine, who was three at the time, vanished from her bedroom during a family holiday there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.
He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005.
